Classical Folk
Telling me about herself,
her childhood, family struggles
made her who and what she is today:
a wonderful classic of musical charm.
The point is telling
the story only she can.
She remembers.
She wants me to know.
It’s all important.
Another girl on my mind
made me wonder.
What was it like
to have been her?
Look both ways when looking into the lives of others.
Mind the gaps and do the research.
Dear Mistress Rochelle,
Please excuse Mr. Bill’s absence as he was poetically abusing himself.
Sincerely,
NaPoWriMo
♥⇔♥
I could not pass up Ted’s excellent picture of a funny memory. Rochelle, from whose blog we all learn so well, can be found by clicking on Ted’s photo. From there you may, in May, write a micro-blurb story according to the rule of Her Fabulous Highness.
Genre: SNL Fake History
Title: He’s Gonna be Mean to Me
Word count: 100
The flyer said, “Script writers wanted: interviews, 8PM Saturday night, 30 Rock Plaza, studio 8H.” I went.
Before I knocked, I heard a high-pitched voice, “Oh Nooooo, Miss Sally. Do it again.” A female voice yelled, “Idiot! When I said, ‘Bite me,’ I didn’t mean for you to bite me, Dummy.”
I knocked. I heard banging and doors slamming. The squeaky voice said, “Please come in, Mister Bill.”
I entered. A stuffed doll in a chair said, “If you can script a skit, you start tonight.”
When I told him I couldn’t do that, he yelled, “Oh nooooooo, Mister Bill.”
Look both ways and remember nineteen-seventy-eight.
Mind the gaps but save the records, ducks, dolls, skits, and names.
For the final day of the challenge, we were to write a poem in which the speaker is identified with, or compared to, a character from myth or legend.
I chose a Greco-Roman mythological goddess, Megaera, from the three Furies: Alecto (anger), Megaera (jealousy), and Tisiphone (avenger). I embodied her as a pet cat.
Controlling Feline
I am Megaera the Cat, your jealous Goddess
sent here by Gaea and made from
the blood of the Lord tomcat, Uranus.
My holy task is to punish you for being human.
You may do nothing without my revocable approval.
If I have not approved your every action,
the indignity of Hades awaits within my hairball.
You must be shamed into submission by me.
I will make you fall; I will pee on everything
and everyone else you love until you bow,
honor, and feed me. Pet and feel bitter pain.
Privacy is a sin. Your computer is mine now.
All this furniture is mine and mine alone
to use and abuse as, and when, I see fit.
My water bowl is only half full. Fool!
I am a daughter of Darkness. Do not even look
at another cat, animal, bird, person, or
(may Nyx and Zeus forbid such sin) a dog.
You will pay dearly and experience
the smell of Hell, if you ignore me.
Look both ways, forward into May and back to April.
Mind the gaps as you recover from 30-in-30, all to prompt.
We are saved by the human gift of humor. Empowered by babble.
The darling lexicographers at Merriam-Webster selected ten words from Taylor Swift songs. I was double-dog-dared to choose one of the words and write a poem that uses that word in its title.
Antithetically Self-effacing
Having a love-hate relationship
with attention and spotlights
and being “that guy” when attention
is focused on me, which makes it weird
that I like to stand and speak at the mic,
to be the MC, the introverted old man
who is not very shy—that guy
is certainly me. She said I had
“mic presence” (whatever it was).
I will talk to anyone, especially
those who break the clichéd ice first.
Me! The stage crew grunt who,
without notice or one second of rehearsal,
had to read his lines from
Macbeth in front of the entire
student body, whose girlfriend
said, “Your pants were so tight,
I was distracted. You read lines?”
Yeah, I am that guy.
Look both ways and listen to the words of the tortured and ravaged poets,
and when the West Reading angel sings, or gives one of her looks;
sing, sing, sing; or dance, if you can’t.
And mind the gaps if she gets you tickets for the Super Bowl.
Today, I am to “try” writing a poem using the traditional Korean verse form called sijo (in English, of course).
It’s raining but there is sun, so flowers grow, and life goes on.
I love rain. It loves me back. Happy are these days of wonder.
Without rain there would be no life. Let it rain down, not every day.
Look both ways walking in the rain.
Mind the gaps between the lightning strikes.
Day twenty-seven’s prompt/challenge was to write an “American sonnet,” which has about 14 lines but few other rules.
Walmart, Target, & Pops
Believing don’t make it so.
But away I went to be deceived (again)
by Wally’s lies and glazed-over eyes.
Asked the young, dumb dude,
(who could not have cared less)
paid to stand and deliver,
when asked “what?” — he repeats
nothing no louder. Deceived again,
I wondered why I ever even bother.
I tried Targeé, a nicer Wally in cleaner clothes.
Redder, with far less bullshit blue…but still….
Siri-baby gets confused, but she finds me
a local store; its owner kind, helpful,
knowledgeable, and it costs me less.
Me thinking what?
Look both ways up and down the aisles
as you hunt the elusive product among evasive dodging dunces.
Mind the gaps in boxes and wasted hunts save nothing and stress is not living better.
Today NaPoWriMo-ists, like me, were to write a poem that “involves” (includes) consonance, alliteration, and assonance. TMI follows (but if you want a review):
Consonance (literary) is the repetition of consonant sounds (coming home, hot foot). It is counterpart to the vowel-sound repetition known as assonance. (Sibilance is a special case of consonance as in Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven”: And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain.)
Alliteration is the repetition of consonant sounds at the beginning of words. It is a special case of consonance as in “few flocked to the fight” or “around the rugged rock the ragged rascal ran“.
Assonance is the repetition of vowel sounds in, or across, words that are close together. Rhyme is a special case of assonance. Examples include, Light My Fire, Crying Time, great flakes, between trees, the kind knight rides by, and (from The Puffin Book of Fantastic First Poems):
If you can boogaloo
boogaloo
I can do
the boogaloo too
for I’m the boogiest
hopaloo kangaroo
Confession: I love this stuff and had way too much fun today.
Billy’s Benevolent Bedlam
Bronco bouncer Billy Bob Butler,
advisedly and explanatorily was told not to
babble in the scrabble or to write
clichéd adverbial conquests, but to eschew
some few buffoon modifications.
Billy bought beer, bratwurst, and beans.
Faithfully and frivolously his fast fingers
freely flowed past; creatively composing
craftily as he constructed compositions,
purportedly passing on poorly penned
prepositional phrases padded with
crispy mystery, in dumb opposition
to some cat’s torty affirmation.
Look both ways and use all the tools in the box.
Play the crux of the tune with a sax, but mind the gaps, and love the turd’s words.
Lyrics matter more to the baritone in a cappella.
I made it to Day 25, only to find this prompt prodding me to write a poem based on the “Proust Questionnaire.” WTF is that? We were given a wiki link and 35 questions, then set loose to sow whatever poetic damage we could. Proust? Really?
Beaucoup de Sade
What do you consider the perfect murder?
Do you want to kill anyone?
Or some group; like atheists,
gymnasts, or Sociologists? If so—
who, which, when, how, and why?
And where do you live?
Do you like to scare the shit out of people?
Do you point and laugh after they
wet themselves or die of a heart attack?
What is your favorite form of torture?
Do you reminisce about the Spanish Inquisition?
Of all the people you know, what proportion
do you hate the most and wish they were dead?
(Former spouses, Mormons, and JWs don’t count.)
And why? It’s always why, right? I wonder too.
Do you hate any professional or amateur
sports teams, clubs, individuals, musicians, or poets?
Do you consider prohibition of libel and slander
an impingement on your freedom of speech?
Did you make crank calls as a child?
How many times a week do you defecate?
Masturbate?
What smells get you sexually excited?
Do you fantasize doing naughty things
with people you know, like your best friend’s
current or previous spouse or partner?
Who are your favorite villains? Are you
ever good on the bad guys and gals?
What are you addicted to?
Do you think pizza is overrated?
Do you hang out at cemeteries
just to find peeps with shared
hopes and dreams?
Did you enjoy this prompt
as much as I did?
Look both ways and only read Proust if your name is Duane (Moore)
and doing your psychiatrist is your lifelong fantasy.
Mind the gaps for punji traps because some wars never end.
To meet today’s prompt; after much wondering, looking, rabbit-hole tripping-into, and unsuccessful Google hunts, I landed on a line (two, actually) to bogart from the poem “Weatherman” by Emily XYZ (from the book, Verses That Hurt: Pleasure and Pain from the Poemfone Poets, (eds.: Jordan and Amy Trachtenberg).
The prompt was to write a poem that begins with a line from another (person’s) poem. The line(s) I chose begin Emily’s poem and mine: “Had I been a bomb builder then instead of a baby // boomer which I was which I am still”….
Baby Bomber
Had I been a bomb builder then instead of a baby
boomer which I was and which I am still,
I could have been either famously infamous,
or just plain old famous.
For my cause I could have maimed and murdered
my way into a second life as a Jeff Dunham puppet.
Born after, I missed the big WW-two, was virtually clueless
about a Korean War which ended on my 7th birthday,
but the big boom-boom, GI-numbah ten, at 17,
that dirty old Southeast Asian War for which I was almost eligible for the draft,
so I joined up. Git ‘er done, ya know?
But ten years later, as that buff bomber guy, I learned how nukes were made (Top Secret with critical nuclear weapon design information/CNWDI).
I coulda kilt many a monkey (literally) in Nam, disabled shit factories and fried females that the Chinese didn’t kill for crowd control, or pounded the Rooskys so hard I might have sterilized Putin’s daddy. Coulda but didn’t.
Never built a bomb or John Wayned
some commie pinko fascist and there are days when my ambivalence
flips my lifeless wig. Today, I wonder.
Left, right, left, and now your right;
what side am I on? And who cares?
If I’d been born a bomber instead of a boomer; things would be
exactly as they are. Except for this poem. And except for the spelling of this cause or that; how much difference is there between them and me?
Look both ways down the tunnel searching for which religion or cause is worth dying for.
Mind the gaps that may suck you in, or pay you well, because killing for a cause is killing still.
Today, without charge or payment, NaPo poets were to write a poem involving a “superhero” (a fictional hero having extraordinary or superhuman [as in not human] powers).
Actually, and indirectly, I’ve already quasi done this. But is not a superhero (SH) a matter of opinion?
What’s My Measure?
Superhero (SH), Man! Impressive!!
How good are you? How real?
How many followers you got?
Seventy-four million “yeas” gets you funded,
your lawyers and other whores paid as well.
What do you call Batman and Robin
after they got run over by a … never mind.
Then, Rock-in Robin came bopping in—
When the Dell Comics (Marvel?) boys called
wardrobe for a masked sidekick for the real
Caped Crusader. Shazam!
Batman sales doubled, thanks to Robin.
The value of America’s superheroes
took a new low bow but made high book.
Robin aged-up from (tweet, tweet, tweet)
and morphed into superhero: Nightwing,
when that role wasn’t confused with,
or filled by a morphed Superman.
Yeah, Babe, it’s all about cold, hard sales—
product endorsements, shoe sales,
pizza stores, and insurance coverage
(and now bibles, for Christ’s sake).
Is there anything in this country
not all about, and measured with, money?
Is that our reality? TBF, even Wikipedia
and self-pubbed twit poets (like me) need money.
Is wealth and value our true measure?
Are our real SH’s Bezos, Musk, Gates,
Zuckerberg, and Buffet? Even God
seems to constantly need more money.
Look both ways and wonder where your money goes.
Mind the gaps for anything that makes us feel better,
anything that will push product out the door.
Our Literary Journey 